Barnes & Noble is on a mission to declutter its stores of gifts and games and make room for what it sees as its next big moneymaker—books.

“There’s too much stuff in the stores,” said Barnes & Noble Inc. Chief Executive Demos Parneros, in an interview after the company’s earnings call. “We’re drawing a line in the sand and reducing the assortment of gift items and what I’d call tchotchkes. For example, we love journals. But we have way too many. We’re refocusing on books.”

. . . .

Mr. Parneros described the decision to refocus on books as a “definite shift in strategy” prompted by what he said were disappointing sales results over the past 10 quarters. Barnes & Noble entered the educational toys and games sector aggressively in 2010, when digital books were growing fast, and later broadened its gift selection.

That gift merchandise will remain, said Mr. Parneros, but there will be less of it, partly in response to customers who said they wanted to see more books.

I can’t help wondering if there’s any connection between the fact that they can stock books at minimal risk–free to return them in any condition for a full refund–vs. having to actually pay for the tchotchkes.

Too little too late for most of their former customers. Far too often they didn’t have the book you were looking for – and trying to order a book was a pain (and took far too long.)

Most of us have gone online because we could find what we were looking for and it was faster and easier (and far too often cheaper.)

They’re going to have to do something to make us think that they’re worth visiting and I myself can’t think of a reason that great (well, I do miss the old Radio Shack – before they started selling phones – back when you could actually buy all the parts needed for most projects, but there aren’t enough people interested in doing that to keep the stores open.)

From the slide show in the article it looks like somewhere from a quarter to a third of their floor space is taken up by the kitchen, the bakery or the seating, though that is a bit hard to judge perfectly.